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We don’t just report off-beat news, breaking news and digest the best and worst of the news media analysis and commentary. We give an original take on what happened and why. We add lols, satire, news photos and original content.

Katie Hopkins is having an operation on her brain. The Sun’s vile-to-deadline columnist gives the newspaper an “exclusive” in much the same way a baby gives their parent an exclusive look at their filled nappy. But let’s not knock Katie because this is serious.

Joey Barton has been talking with the Times’ Matthew Syed. Billed “the baddest man in British football”, Barton is now “hardman turned philosopher”, living in London’s leafy Kew with a young family and burning desire to be a better man.

Syed journeys to Barton’s childhood home in Huyton, a few miles from the centre of Liverpool, “where violence was as much a part of his upbringing as oxygen.”

Barton, who at junior level wore the colours of Everton and Liverpool, and played professionally for Manchester City, Newcastle, Marseilles and QPR, is happy to talk.

In “Teen dies from ‘dodgy drugs’ at festival Police warning as four others are left seriously ill in hospital”, the Sun reports on the death of Christian Pay, 18, a woman in a critical condition and three other men left in serious peril after attending at Cumbria’s Kendal Calling Festival.

Did drugs do it?

Cops have issued a warning about three drugs they believe are linked to the tragedy.

They include a blue tablet with an Adidas logo, a light green tablet with a white fleck and a plain grey tablet with a white fleck.

STUART Baggs is the latest member of the 27 Club — a group of high-profile names who lost their lives aged just 27…

What band was Stuart Baggs in, then? He was in the Alan Sugar And The Apprentices, where he once played a tour guide in an effort to win a work placement at blustering Lord Sugar’s offices in Essex and a lacunae in common sense and self-awareness. Key quote: “I’m not a one-trick pony. I’m not a ten-trick pony. I’m a whole field of ponies and they’re literally all running towards this job.”

Police said that the cause of Stuart Baggs’s death was “unknown” but that there was “nothing to indicate that his death is criminally suspicious”.

Transfer Balls: Hear the one about the Real Madrid “star” who doesn’t want to join Chelsea? The Daily Expresshas:

Real Madrid star: I don’t want to join Chelsea

We meet Jese Rodriguez, 22. We want to know what he has against Chelsea?

“I’ve never wanted to leave. I’m very grateful to the coach for counting on me. He’s shown he has faith in me. I’ll try to make the most of every opportunity I get. Coming back midway through last season as I had to do and not play, then play was far more complicated. I feel better. The injury is well behind me and I feel great. I don’t mind where I play. I like all attacking positions so I can adapt easily.”

This we know because the likelihood of it being Our Maddie was at slightly longer odds than her being found working with Elvis in Brent X. It is also a fact broadcast by the BBC:

Body found in suitcase in Australia ‘not missing girl’

Phew! The remains of a child found inside a suitcase by a road in Australia are not that of the “missing girl”. We can all carry on with your lives happily now. Unless, there are more missing children than just Madeleine McCann and the story of the young body in the bag is unsettling.

The body of a girl whose remains were discovered in a suitcase in Australia is not missing Madeleine McCann, police have confirmed.

If not the media’s benchmark for all missing children then who?

South Australia Police said it had ruled out 43 missing children in connection to the discovery by a remote motorway in Wynarka, near Adelaide.

Chelsea manager Jose Mourinho has been talking with the Times Matt Hughes in Montreal, Canada

On Mistakes:

“I’m accepting of mistakes, but not accepting of a lot of mistakes. Mistakes are a part of the game, but a lot of mistakes are not. I’m emotional and this game doesn’t allow us to make lots of mistakes because we are punished for that.”

On Referees:

“…when there is an accumulation of mistakes like we had last season, I’m sorry, I find it difficult to accept. If I make too many mistakes and I put players on the bench then I’m sacked. Referees should be given a rest if they make mistakes, if only to take pressure off them.”

Giving a defence opening speech, Sarah Elliott QC, representing Black, said she “wholeheartedly” refutes that any abuse took place, adding that the children’s recollections had never been challenged.

She said it was possible the victims’ accounts may have been “influenced” and “encouraged” by others.

“Their carers have accepted what they’ve been told, the social workers have accepted what they’ve been told, the police have accepted what they’ve been told,” Ms Elliott said. “Nobody has challenged them.”

Michael Rogers, 53, from Romford, Essex, was also found guilty of 14 counts, including cruelty, rape and inciting a child to engage in sexual activity. Jason Adams, 43, from Norwich, was found guilty of 13 similar counts.

Marie Black, Michael Rogers and Jason Adams preyed on children aged under 13

During the three-month trial, the court was told how the ring would hold parties with other adults who would play cards to see who would get to abuse which child, while other forms of abuse included the use of toys such as Barbie dolls…

In interviews with the victims, it was disclosed that the children were forced to have sex with each other and would be abused in front of each other and other adults.

A male victim says:

“There would be parties and they would do some games where the boys were in one room with the men and the girls were in another with the women. The adults would have a card game and the winner would get to choose a boy to start touching their private parts and then hurt them afterwards.”

What about the authorities? Sheila Lock, interim executive director of children’s services at Norfolk County Council, said:

“The victims in this case have shown tremendous courage in speaking out. The needs of the children, who were central to the prosecution case, have always been at the fore of our minds and have been the main focus of all of the agencies involved.

“Our priority continues to be the children in this case who, despite the ordeal they have been through, are now doing well and are safe from harm.”

We first heard of Marie Black in 2012. Christopher Booker told her story in the Telegraph:

In France there were tears of joy when Marie Black and Joe Ollis were reunited with their baby daughter Luna, born in France in February but then seized by Norfolk social workers, to be brought back to England to live in foster care. Although this action had been sanctioned by a British court, a High Court judge ruled in May that the seizure was illegal, because Luna was born in France and was therefore outside UK jurisdiction.

Despite further prevarication by the social workers, they eventually obeyed the judge’s order that the child should be returned to France. Last week, finally, Luna was handed by a French court back to her parents. “At first,” they tell me, “she was quiet and withdrawn after her time in foster care, but now she is alert and cheerful.”

Last year I reported the shocking story of Marie Black and Joe Ollis who escaped to France for the birth of their first child, after learning that Norfolk social workers intended to seize it at birth on the grounds that Marie had previously been in a violent relationship with another man, who was by then out of her life…

At a cottage deep in the French countryside, a baby girl kicks her feet in the air and smiles at her father, Joe, as she is cuddled by her mother, Marie.

Little Luna is home at last — reunited with her parents at the end of an historic legal battle against British social workers which began when Marie became pregnant and moved to France from her home in Norfolk.

Marie Black was a fighter who loved kids.

Marie said this week at their home near Cahors in south-west France: ‘We were so excited. Luna went to sleep that first night back with us as though she had never been away.

‘I lost the chance of breastfeeding her, and we missed her first smile. We blame the English social workers’But she added: ‘I had lost the chance of breastfeeding her, and we missed her first smile. We blame the English social workers.’

Sweet Marie.

Marie had married young and had five children by her abusive husband before fleeing his violence. At one stage, she lived with her children in a hostel for abused women.

But when this proved difficult, she asked social services for help. They took the children into temporary care, and have refused to return them…

And not forgetting:

The couple’s solicitor, Brendan Fleming, added: ‘I find it amazing that social workers flew to a country outside their jurisdiction and brought this baby to Britain at a cost of thousands of pounds of public money.’

Social workers are under immense pressure not to make a mistake following the Baby P case in London in 2007. He died after suffering many injuries despite being seen by Haringey social services and NHS doctors.

Allegations were first reported to police in 2010 but it was in December 2012, when further evidence was disclosed, that police decided they had sufficient evidence to progress the criminal investigation and eventually make the initial arrests in 2013.

The police used a battering ram to raid John Sewel’s Dophin Square flat. Lord of the realm and former Labour minister Mr Sewel had been filmed snorting white powders from a woman’s breasts with a £5 note.

The Sun on Sunday has been a limp rag since it’s inception, a poor and pallid replacement to the often brilliant News of The World. But having scored a hit with the Queen’s Nazi salute, the paper has now outed a Labour peer as a man who thinks Asian woman are “whores” and spends his down time in the comfort of an orange bra and by-the-hour breasts.

Married with four children, Sewel has now quit the House of Lords, saying he was sorry for the “pain and embarrassment” he had caused.

Robert Palmer found a caterpillar with a human face in Toutle, Washington.

“My first thought was to crush it with my cane, then I thought, no, it looks so strange, I’m going to take a picture of it, ” says Palmer. “I’m going to be 70 in November. And I’ve never seen a bug with a human face staring back at me. I’ve sent the picture to OMSI, the Portland Zoo, Fish & Wildlife, the Extension Service, The Master Gardeners. People either don’t respond or don’t know what kind it is. Some people aren’t taking this very seriously.”

“I sent a picture to my grandson, he said ‘nice Photoshop grandpa’. I said I can’t even use my smart phone half the time, much less do some special computer effects. I had to have the girls at the Shell station send the picture to the local TV station. He knows I wouldn’t lie about this.”

Do we believe in the bug that looks like Lord Kitchener?

“It’s Bob, he wouldn’t lie about anything. He’s just really intrigued by what kind of caterpillar it is, and getting somebody to figure it out, that’s why he’s always talking about it,” said Kay Hank.

“One woman told it looks like the devil,” says Palmer, “I decided to stay away from her, if she’s actually seen the devil. Haha.”

News is leading with the report that Whitney Houston and Bobby Brown’s daughter, Bobbi Kristina Brown has died. She was 22. Back on January 31st 2015, Bobbi Kristina was found unresponsive at her home in a bath. Placed in medially induced coma, Bobbi Kristina was after two months transferred to a rehabilitation centre. One month ago she was moved into a hospice.D-listednotes:

The D.A. has reportedly been investigating Bobbi Kristina’s adopted brother/fake husband Nick Gordon, because they believe he may have had something to do with why she lost consciousness. Bobbi Kristina’s conservator has also thrown a lawsuit at Nick for allegedly stealing her money, abusing her and pretending to be her husband.

Her family have released a statement:

“She is finally at peace in the arms of God. We want to again thank everyone for their tremendous amount of love and support during these last few months.”

Liverpool’s James Milner “turned down £165,000 a week to remain at Manchester City”, writes the Sun. The paper works out that Milner sacrificed £65,000 a week to reignite his career at Anfield.

Is he really on £100,000 a week because the Guardian says Milner is paid £150,000 a week at Liverpool? And that £165,000 a week was based on the top figure, taking into account win and appearance bonuses at City. The Mail says Miler was earning £100,000 a week at City – which would mean he took a pay rise to join Liverpool.

And what of the signing-on fee at Liverpool, of which the Sun makes no mention? As a free agent, the Mirror says any fee would have been “huge“.

The Sun aims is to present Milner as something different to all other top players, the one who does it for love not money. But the facts don’t support the portrayal. Milner earns more at Liverpool than he did at City. The move has not cost him £65,000 a week.

Says Milner:

“… I think the move to Liverpool and to take that mantle of central midfield was more of a selfish move. This is a chance for me to prove something. I want to look back at my career and feel I got everything out of it and was the best player I could be and won as much as I could.

“I don’t want to be sat at the end of my career thinking I could have done more or left something out there.

“I believe I can achieve things here where I could maybe have found myself on the bench at City and just taken the money.”

Anyone looking for videos of Baron John Sewel, 69, Deputy Speaker of the Lords, naked and snorting white powders is in luck. You might also searched under his given name: John Buttifant Sewel.

By way of a bonus for niche porno hunters, the Sun tosses in “£200-a-night hookers” (pair of), the line, as delivered by the peer, “What about trying the big one?”, a spot of casual racism (“Asian women look innocent but you know they’re whores”) and news that the video is set in Dolphin Square, a block of flats becoming more notorious by the day.

“If the Blackshirts movement had any need of justification, the Red Hooligans who savagely and systematically tried to wreck Sir Oswald Mosley’s huge and magnificently successful meeting at Olympia last night would have supplied it.”

The Guardian July 25, 2015:

Islamic State is often called ‘medieval’ but is in fact very modern – a horrific expression of a widespread frustration with a globalised western model that promises freedom and prosperity to all, but fails to deliver.

You can read Pankaj Mishra’s dire essay in full. But be warned: it’s 10 minutes of your life you will never get back.

Rod Richards, a former Conservative MP and ex-leader of the Welsh Tories, made the shocking allegation that he had seen evidence linking Sir Peter Morrison to the North Wales children’s homes case, in which up to 650 children in 40 homes were sexually, physically and emotionally abused over 20 years.

Mr Richards also linked a second leading Tory grandee – now dead – to the scandals at homes including Bryn Estyn and Bryn Alyn Hall, both near Wrexham.

He said official documents had identified the pair as frequent, unexplained visitors to the care homes. Mr Richards – who helped establish the inquiry that unearthed the scale of the abuse – said bluntly: ‘What I do know is that Morrison was a paedophile. And the reason I know that is because of the North Wales child abuse scandal.’

Today the Times says sources claimed Morrison had “a penchant for small boys”.

The paper says MI5 did question Morrison, the Conservative MP for Chester and deputy chairman of the party. Papers found in Westminster reveal that Sir Antony Duff, head of the Security Service, to Sir Robert Armstrong, the cabinet secretary, said Morrison was not a big deal.

Duff died in 200o. His obituary inThe Guardiancalled him “the epitome of the wise public servant on whom Whitehall’s ship of state has traditionally relied”.

Armstrong lives. He was Cabinet Secretary during the premierships of Margaret Thatcher, John Major and Tony Blair.

Now age 88, he tells the Times:

“My official business was the protection of national security. I have to stress that there was nothing like evidence in this case. There was just a shadow of a rumour. It’s impossible to take investigative action on shadows of rumours.”

These days you accept rumour as fact and beat the dead bodies with sticks.

“If there is some reason to think a crime has been committed, then people like the cabinet secretary are not to start poking their noses into it. It’s for the police to do that.”

But who directs the police?

In July 1990, Morrison was appointed Thatcher’s parliamentary private secretary (PPS).

Arsenal director Philip Charles Harris, Baron Harris of Peckham, tells theDaily Mailthe Gunners are rich enough to buy almost any player in the world.

So why don’t they?

The story begins: “Arsene Wenger has more than £200m in the bank, says Arsenal director.”

“We would back him to break the club’s transfer record. If he wanted the man, he could have him,” says Harris (estimated wealth: £285m). “Apart from Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo, he could have any player.”

Undoubtedly Arsenal are spending more on players than ever before. But surely it’s fantasy to believe they have the same financial muscles as Manchester United, Real Madrid, PSG, Manchester City, Chelsea or Bayern Munich.

“Money was tight when we moved to the Emirates but it’s a lot freer now,” continues Lord Harris. “We could go into the market and probably buy any player in the world, apart from half a dozen who are unbuyable. We get a list of the players that Wenger wants. On the list is a centre forward, but I’m not going to tell you who he is.

“You’ve got to get the other team to want to sell him, but I think he wants to come. It basically comes down to whether the other team can find a superstar to replace him, because they don’t have to sell.”